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Singur To Nandigram: Who are Fighting? Who are the leaders?
Yesterday it was Singur. Today it is Nandigram. Tomorrow? Singur – 1,000 acres. Nandigram – 14,000 acres. The type is same, the demand is single-point: we shall not give up our land!
Resistances of the peasants are growing. Nandigram outdid Singur. Taking strength from Singur, standing on the 7-8 months' experience of Singur, Nandigram is getting prepared. Today's Nandigram is in continuity with Singur.The Left Front government of West Bengal and its big brother CPI(M) thought that peasants could easily be evicted from land throwing monetary carrot and luring by sops of employment. It wasn't easy. Threatening the peasants, trying to browbeat them didn't work either. So the government brought 20,000 polices, encircled villages, brutally tortured unarmed villagers including women. So the government had to show its heroism by fencing off 1000 acres of land by State Terror. Tata also got overwhelmed with joy. But Singur doesn't end there. Those who started their fight with the slogan: We'll give our lives but not land – their resistance is still continuing; they are preparing to fight back. Undoubtedly Nandigram will boost up their confidence and courage.
Certainly Nandigram has studied the Singur movement from beginning, tried to understand that, to take lessons from that. They understood that attack would come and took preparation for that. They didn't wait. The moment the government land acquisition notice arrived the Panchayat offices the peasant–tenant-peasant–labourer masses of Nandigram stood in resistance so spontaneously that police didn't dare to enter villages of Nandigram. Till today the police couldn't enter the villages. In a war footing the peasants have taken different tactics to stop police vehicles from entering the area.
But the government and CPI(M) too took lessons from Singur. They made happen in Nandigram what didn't happen in Singur — the Party directly started war against the peasant masses. In the dark of the night the party hooligans leapt upon the villages and fired indiscriminately. But the peasant masses deserve congratulations. They didn't move back, they stood up in resistance. Seven persons were killed. The Nandigram resistance struggle for saving land got highlighted with the blood of the martyrs from the very start. And simultaneously it became evident to the workers, peasant, toiling masses of West Bengal how far, to what extent, CPI(M) as a ruling party can go in favour of Tata, Salim, Jindal, etc big capitalists.
It was heard that one peasant of Beraberi village of Singur said, “We have conducted our movement peacefully. We did programmes like protest meetings, gatherings, deputations, even fasting. The government didn't listen. The Nandigram peasants took lesson form this. They understood that to make the government listen you'd have to take up arms.” Perhaps that peasant of Beraberi told this from their bitter memory of brutal police tortures. Perhaps for this reason the Nandigram villagers have raised a slogan: Nandigram and Singur are not the same. If that's so then Left Front government and particularly CPI(M) are responsible.
But we'll ask the fighting peasant masses of Nandigram to consider that a bigger and the most important lesson from Singur at this moment is something different. That lesson is: the fight is yours, the liability of saving land is yours, and so the rein, the control, of the struggle should also remain in your hands. The Singur fighters didn't or couldn't go forward that much. Surely you are aware of the fact that when the Singur peasants were fighting day in, day out, particularly when police was crushing them on 2nd December, the lower strata of the neighbouring villages, the agricultural labourers, poor peasants there, were standing away and distant, they didn't came in side of the struggling Singur peasants. Because CPI(M) could convince the lower strata people still under its fold that the Singur struggle was in fact a Trinamool Congress movement, a Mamata's fight…. Undeniably, this TMC/Mamata mark/label on the Singur fight resisted the lower strata people still with CPI(M) mark/label to come forward in the aid of the struggle, although those people never thought that the government was acting justifiably. The power of the State could be confronted by a wide unity of the lower strata people; but what was standing in the way of that unity was that TMC leadership, or the Mamata label.
The party labels, stamps are acting against the unity of lower strata people: Singur does not teach that only. The Nandigrm fighters, specially their advanced section, must remember that their interest and the interests of TMC-BJP-Congress etc established parties are not the same. All those parties are tied up with the big capitalists. If they have control, rein over the fights of workers, peasants, lower strata people, the struggles will be tied within a boundary of compromises. The Nandigram fighters must understand a fact: the increasing assaults on the working class countrywide and the attack on the peasantry to grab their land, both are part of a single string. The reason behind both is a single central policy: Globalisation-Liberalisation; and that policy was chalked in favour of class interests of foreign and native capitalists. So without wavering like Singur peasants the Nandigram fighters should clearly maintain that — the struggle to save land that you have started can only go forward if you yourselves provide the leadership, because you are not tied-up with anybody else. You must realise that the struggle to save your land is actually a struggle against the policy of capitalist class. Today what the CPI(M) is doing sitting in the government seat, TMC or Congress would do the same if they were in government power and Congress is actually doing the same sitting in the central government seat.
It is indisputable that if the struggles to save land, be that in West Bengal or in other states like those of Kalinganagar, dadri etc, could get united then it would have been better. We believe that the fighting peasantry of Bahngar, Singur, Baruipur, Haripur, Nandigram are thinking about this unity while fighting in their own battles. But will this unity be achieved if one such fight gets branded as Mamata's fight, another as a fight of Congress, yet another as a fight of this or that party/organisation? At the top level a unity of the leaders may come about due to some compulsions of them — but that unity will be either for chaining those fights with compromise, or, for their competition as to who will ultimately control the fights. They are all committed to the policy of Globalisation-Liberalisation, they act differently when they are in the government seat and when they are not; moreover, they all vie for ultimately en-cashing people's dissentions in electoral battle: if one depends on the unity of them, then it will be harmful for the struggle. Just think one – that Congress which fathered the new economic policy that ruins the toiling masses, that Congress which taking hold of CPI(M) is setting up so many Special Economic Zones in India like that one proposed for Nandigram, for which millions of peasants will be evicted, why that Congress will leap about for Nandigram? Isn't that like a counterbalance to the media blitz of TMC-Mamata regarding Singur? Anyway, we can assertively say that the governments, be that of Left Front or of any other party, are aggressive about evicting peasants taking the strength of the ruling class policy of Globalisation-Liberalisation; and the unity of the parties of upper stratum doesn't have the power to confront that. That power is there in the unity of lower strata, in the unity of workers-peasants-toiling masses. The slogan: ‘Nandigram and Singur are not the same' will really be successful when the leadership of the Nandigram struggle will be totally in the hands of the peasants-labourers there.
Those who call themselves revolutionary communists had much to do at this moment, but what they are doing? Some groups have gone inside the unity of the upper stratum, as for example within the Mamata camp in Singur case, they are de facto practising the same as Mamata, and are helping to strengthen Mamata's rein, control over the fight and the leader-dependence of the lower stratum. In this way they can perhaps enhance their personal, organisational popularity, but in this way the class struggle will not march forward a single inch, rather the working class will be more confused. And those who are now talking of marching separately leaving the Mamata camp, it is really difficult to understand what different thing they are doing, if we consider their programmes like calling Bandhs, etc. Probably they are trying to raise an alternative of Mamata against CPI(M), but the essence of such alternative is nothing but a parliamentary alternative. If the people of the lower strata can establish their own leadership on their fights separating from TMC-BJP-Congress etc parties and hundreds of NGO-s like Medha etc, then that will be the communists' presence within the movement, then the communists can say: we are in the fight.
We believe that Nandigram will move ahead with correct summing up of lessons of Singur, and Singur will stand up again in resistance summing up its past.
10.01.2007
KRISHAK COMMITTEE / SRAMIK SANGRAM COMMITTEE